


A House That Tries to Be Haunted

by asroarke



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Protective!Bellamy, Small Towns, bellamy doesn't like hunting ghosts but for clarke he might make an exception
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24866464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asroarke/pseuds/asroarke
Summary: “I’m not a Ghostbuster. I don’t hunt ghosts,” Bellamy grumbles, turning back to the portrait of Cadogan.With no one else in the museum, he imagines she must be bored. That’s the only explanation for why she steps beside him and looks at the painting. “Then, what is it you do?”Bellamy considers her. She doesn’t seem to be mocking him, but he wouldn’t know her well enough to tell if she were. The girl is pretty, though. The sort to have gone to that fancy private school down the road and never venture south of the train tracks.“I listen to them,” he says, watching for an eye roll or laugh. But it doesn’t come.For the prompt: Clarke and Bellamy as ghost hunters or Clarke and Bellamy in a haunted house like the haunting of hill house?
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 26
Kudos: 118
Collections: The t100 Writers for BLM Initiative





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I must admit, I've never seen The Haunting of Hill House. But I took ghosts and ran with it. I happen to live in a small town that is drowning in ghost stories, so I'm leaning into that vibe. I hope you like it! Not sure how long this is going to be, but it's definitely going to have a few chapters because it's gotten away from me oops.

Ark had been O’s idea. _Old towns are full of ghosts_ , she insisted. And maybe they are, but Bellamy hasn’t seen one yet. Sure, their line goes off at least twice a week, which is far more frequent than in Mt. Weather. But it’s never for an actual haunting.

Vera Kane had them investigate her attic, which she was certain was crawling with evil spirits. Turns out, her son had called an exterminator to deal with her mice problem up there and she didn’t remember him telling her that, though he swears he did.

Jasper Jordan reported seeing something in the old cemetery. It would have been nice to have known that the kid had been high as a kite before Bellamy and Octavia spent an entire evening searching a cemetery. He should have known better. Ghosts don’t linger around cemeteries if they can help it.

That little girl Reese offered everything in her piggy bank to make sure her bedroom wasn’t haunted after another girl brought a Ouija board to a sleepover and claimed to have summoned a spirit. He did that one free of charge.

At least in Mt. Weather, there had been real ghosts. Here, he’s just like a parent who checks his kid’s closet to make sure no monsters are in there.

He decides to look a little closer at Ark’s history. Bellamy walks around their little square, reading each historical marker looking for anything that looks like prime haunting territory.

In his notebook, he makes little notes of places to look into and research. Across the street from the old courthouse is a museum. Back in the day, it was a doctor’s office. Now, it houses any and all local art along with a few artifacts that outlived their original plantation homes. Though Ark has a rich history, not much from the Civil War survived. Union soldiers burned everything in their path.

All trace of the old-fashioned doctor’s office is gone. He’d guess the original floor sits underneath the carpet. Bellamy wanders through, reading the stories behind each of the portraits.

“If it isn’t the Ghostbuster,” he hears a woman say. Over his shoulder, he sees the blonde girl he saw last time he came in here. Under other circumstances, he’d probably try to say something charming, but he won’t bother with her. He made a fool of himself last time he came in, kicking the door open in a rush to see a ghost when there was none. She made him fix her door, scolding him the entire time like he’s some child. Maybe he wouldn’t be so embarrassed if she weren’t so… damnit. Why does he always have to embarrass himself in front of the pretty ones?

“I’m not a Ghostbuster. I don’t hunt ghosts,” Bellamy grumbles, turning back to the portrait of Cadogan.

With no one else in the museum, he imagines she must be bored. That’s the only explanation for why she steps beside him and looks at the painting. “Then, what is it you do?”

Bellamy considers her. She doesn’t seem to be mocking him, but he wouldn’t know her well enough to tell if she were. The girl is pretty, though. The sort to have gone to that fancy private school down the road and never venture south of the train tracks.

“I listen to them,” he says, watching for an eye roll or laugh. But it doesn’t come.

“Why?”

Someone else enters the museum, so he never gets to answer. She’s whisked to the front door to help the visitor with the headset for the guided tour. While she isn’t looking, Bellamy steals a glance at her name tag. _Clarke Griffin_.

Upstairs, the walls are covered with newspaper headlines. Nothing dated past 1880, which is frustrating. Over a hundred years have passed without anything noteworthy happening? No mysterious disappearances or deaths? No violent murders? Just endless articles on the theater burning to the ground and the fair that stopped being held after the war.

The stairwell doesn’t have any historical artifacts, just the winning paintings from the annual high school art scholarship competition. The only requirement is that they have some part of the town’s history incorporated. Yet with all that leeway, it seems that almost all the winners over the years have interpreted it the same. Most are just different styles of portraits of Cadogan, the town’s mayor during the war. Maybe he’s the only interesting thing about this town. And as far as Bellamy can tell, his ghost moved on already.

“… should be spending your time painting, not being all cooped up in here all day,” he hears Vera Kane say. When he turns the corner, he sees that the old woman has Clarke cornered.

“I spend all my free time painting, I promise,” Clarke chuckles, all warm and sweet.

“You better be! I want this place filled with our favorite local artist’s works,” Vera says with a wink. “We’ll have to get a bigger place for the museum. And with a better parking lot, since we’ll have hundreds of people flooding the place to see where you started out.” Clarke’s face is flushed with embarrassment. “Which year was yours again?”

“2012,” she mumbles. Vera marches in Bellamy’s direction, using her cane to nudge him to the side so she can get to the steps. It never crossed Bellamy’s mind that one of these boring paintings might have been the work of Clarke. He’d guess the watercolor of Cadogan’s wife or the watercolor landscape of Cadogan’s original estate.

It’s neither of those. It’s a painting he didn’t even notice the first time around.

There’s a bridge he recognizes. He jogs over it every morning on his daily run. But it looks darker and more sinister. There’s a woman leaning over the railing, smiling wickedly at the river below. In the water, another woman looks up at her, her arms above her as if asking for help.

Bellamy has read everything he can find about this town’s history, but never once has he come across a drowning. Or is it a murder? All he has to go on is the cryptic title: _ALIE?_

“Who is that painting of?” Bellamy asks Clarke.

“Which one?” she asks, not looking up from the headphones she’s trying to untangle.

“Yours.”

“Becca,” Clarke shrugs.

“Becca…?”

“Becca Franco,” Clarke says, not making eye contact.

“I’ve never read anything about her.”

“That’s because she probably isn’t real,” Clarke mutters. “It’s just a scary story kids around here grow up hearing.” Bellamy narrows his eyes at her. Why would Clarke choose some ghost story to paint if she didn’t believe in it?

“Tell me the story.”

Clarke holds up her finger, smiling sweetly as Vera Kane passes them and heads to the door. Once the door is shut, she begins telling the story.

“Do you believe in witches?” she asks.

“No,” Bellamy snorts.

“But you believe in ghosts.”

“I’ve seen and talked to ghosts,” Bellamy huffs.

“Well, for the record, I don’t believe in witches either. Becca wasn’t a witch. She was a midwife who knew more about medicine than the doctor in town, but because she was a woman who could cure people using science that people here didn’t understand, they thought she was a witch.”

“So, they drowned her?”

“No. Well, not yet. People liked her. She saved a lot of lives…” she trails off, as if she feels silly about the story she’s telling.

“But?”

“In the version of the story I heard, there was something strange about the people she saved. It’s like they had changed. Said they had been touched by Alie, who will take them to the City of Light.” Bellamy writes down _city of light_ to look up when he gets home. “Becca had no explanation for why everyone she healed said this or why they had become so... Anyway, her friends had made plans to get her out of town, sensing that the rest of Ark had begun to turn on her. But they didn’t work fast enough. Someone suggested that Becca was really this Alie person, who must be a witch waiting to lure the people of Ark into darkness. Maybe some religious fanatic had just been spreading this thing around, not her. But the people of the town dragged her from her home, tied weights to her limbs, and drowned her in the river.”

This is what he has been looking for. Sure, it’s full of rumor and myth, but it’s something far more substantial than what he’s been searching through.

Octavia humors this new assignment, transcribing as many stories as they can get out of the locals. Most line up with Clarke’s version. Some of the more religious in the town spice it up a little, alleging that this Becca woman was leading people into temptation. The few experts in the town’s history only acknowledge that there was a woman named Becca Franco and she died by drowning, offering speculation that she jumped off the bridge herself.

Bellamy calls in favors to look into Becca Franco’s past. He gets confirmation that she did exist, and that she died by drowning in Ark’s river. Her father had been a well-respected doctor in his time and shared that passion with his daughter, who hadn’t been allowed to become a doctor herself but pursued medicine anyway. Her father’s writings had been put into the archives, and after sending a small bribe to obtain digital copies and spending a week scanning through them himself, the only new thing he learns is that Becca had a sister who died not long before Becca had moved to Ark.

There is no paper trail to verify the story Clarke had told him, though. The first mention of it he finds is in a paper from 1959 that just says the ghost story had been told around the bonfire that year and elicited screams from kids.

He and Octavia visit the river at night, but after spending the entire evening walking up and down the banks, it’s clear that no ghost has unfinished business here.

Another dead end, Octavia decides.

Bellamy isn’t satisfied with that. He finds himself lingering near the river in the evenings, listening for something. Anything.

* * *

It didn’t really happen. Clarke has spent nine years trying to forget that night. She was drunk. That’s all it had been. Not a… ghost.

On her walk home, she makes a detour. Not a conscious decision, obviously, but ever since that wannabe Ghostbuster came strolling into the museum, it’s been on her mind. That’s how she finds herself in front of the farmhouse.

It’s been perfectly a preserved, though no one has lived in it in decades. Rumor has it that its last homeowner had a nervous breakdown and shot himself in it, though there are no facts to back up that assertion. Finn probably told her that just to make himself sound knowledgeable.

The yellow house has been converted into an event space. Proms, sweet sixteens, bougie fundraisers… all sorts of celebrations held in here.

There’s no one there today, so Clarke should just go home. But when she helped her mom decorate for her breast cancer luncheon, the manager of the property told them to stick the spare key in the slot under the railing when they were done. She doesn’t consciously decide to reach to see if it’s still there. It just happens. And really, is it her fault that they haven’t switched up their hiding places?

Her footsteps echo in the bare space. The weight of the house settles on her chest as she falls against the door. Has it really been nine years since Wells died?

The visitation had been held here. Ark doesn’t have a funeral home, so the farmhouse has become the spot to mourn. It’s fitting, seeing as the widow who used to live here took it upon herself to find all the families of the soldiers who died here.

The downstairs had been loud that night. Hundreds of people crammed in to tell Mayor Jaha how sorry they were for his loss. Today, it’s silent. Blissfully silent. No mourners, no ghosts.

“No such thing as ghosts,” Clarke mutters to herself as a reminder. She didn’t hear a ghost that night. She had snuck every glass of wine she could so that she could numb the pain of having lost her father and best friend in the same year. There’s no wine to numb the memories now, so Clarke cries on the farmhouse’s original wood flooring.

A creak from upstairs washes the color from her face. Old houses like these make all sorts of strange noises, of course. But Clarke’s history with this building leaves her easily spooked. She rushes to her feet and runs out the door, dropping the key and not bothering to lock up behind her as she sprints away.

Her shoes weren’t made for running, and she stops on the bridge to pull them off.

_Jump_

Clarke screams just like she screamed that night. She looks around for the voice, praying it’s some kids playing a joke on her, but there is no one there.

_The pain will go away if you just jump_

No, no. This can’t be happening again. She hasn’t been drinking. There’s no mistaking this for being anything but crazy this time.

She falls to the ground, covering her ears. But she can still hear her voice.

_Jump, Clarke. Go toward the City of Light. There is no pain there._

“Stop!” Clarke cries.

_Jump_

She keeps telling her to jump. Becca. Or Alie. She’ll never know which is which. Or if they’re the same.

That stupid painting. Why did she have to submit it? Why did that guy ask her about it? Why can’t Clarke just let the past die already?

“Clarke?”

_Jump_

“No!” she shouts, still pressing her hands over her ears.

“Hey, what—”

_Jump_

“I won’t!”

A hand grabs her. She screams at the top of her lungs. The hand covers her mouth. Clarke forces her eyes open to see the wannabe Ghostbuster crouching down in front of her with wide, panicked eyes.

In the silent seconds that follow, she stops hearing the voice. Slowly, he removes his hand from her mouth. Clarke breaks into a sob.

“What did it say to you?” he whispers.

The same thing she said nine years ago when a drunk, seventeen-year-old Clarke had opened the window on the third story of the farmhouse and thought about how easy it could all be if it would just end. But she’s never told anyone about that. Too scared someone might think she’s crazy.

“To jump,” Clarke whispers. “That there’s no more pain in the City of Light.”

She chances a look into his eyes, stomach clenching as she waits for him to look at her like she’s mad. But the look doesn’t come.

“Well, I have good news and bad news. Good news: I happen to be good with ghosts.”

“And the bad?” Clarke sniffles.

“This ghost seems to have targeted you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Bellamy is by no means an expert on ghosts. A lot of this has been him and Octavia making it up as they go along. Here is what he does know about them:

  1. They are drawn to the living
  2. They are repelled by things that remind them of death
  3. They won’t leave until they’ve made peace



None of this he learned from a book or reading theories online. There was no manual for what to do when your dead mother’s ghost won’t move on. He had to learn by trial and error, which is the worst way to learn anything.

Bellamy tells none of this to Clarke, who is shaking on his couch and refuses to touch the coffee he made her. It’s best if she thinks him an expert. He’s never dealt with a case of a person being haunted, just places being haunted. Being the target of a hundred-year-old ghost must be terrifying enough without the knowledge that the guy who is helping her is an amateur at best.

“It’s probably not her,” Octavia says. “It’s gotta be the bridge. That’s where the town drowned her, right?”

Bellamy bites the inside of his cheek. The bridge isn’t haunted. Bellamy and Octavia have scoped out every inch of that bridge and river. No signs of a ghost until Clarke crossed it.

“It’s not just the bridge,” Clarke murmurs. It’s the first sentence they’ve gotten out of her since he got her back to their house. It seems ridiculous that he apologized profusely for the mess in their kitchen/living room when Clarke walked in, especially given that she hasn’t looked at anything except her shaking hands.

“So, the house too?” Octavia asks. Clarke nods. “But it didn’t start until you got to the bridge.”

“Tonight, yeah. But nine years ago, I heard her in the house. It was the visitation for my best friend. I was drunk. I thought it was my head playing games with me.”

Octavia exchanges a look with him, thinking the same thing. An ordinary ghost wouldn’t want to be near a visitation. Sure, that house had probably been swimming with warm bodies, but the stench of death would be too irritating for a ghost. Either Bellamy and Octavia are wrong about this, which they’re not, or this ghost really wanted to get to Clarke.

But nine years is a long gap between hauntings. And it’s not as though a ghost from a hundred years ago would have a connection to a girl living now. What unfinished business could she have with Clarke? So, this is not a ghost trying to sever her connection to the living by finding peace. This ghost is up to something else.

“What did she say?”

“O, maybe we should let her rest,” Bellamy suggests. He already knows, anyway. And he’s not sure the ghost would have gotten to Clarke if there wasn’t some part of Clarke that was tempted to listen.

“I should get going,” Clarke says, though she makes no move to stand.

“Uh, maybe you should stay here tonight,” he counters. Relief washes across her pale features, but she opens her mouth to protest anyway. Southern politeness… one of the funniest and most frustrating niceties he’s ever had to deal with. “It’s safer if you stay here.” That shuts down any argument she could come up with.

“Yeah, you can take Bell’s room,” Octavia offers.

“I’m fine on the couch,” Clarke says to him apologetically. Octavia is already heading upstairs to the linen closet to find the clean sheets. “Really,” she adds.

“No, you should take my room,” he insists. He and Octavia took precautions the day they moved into this old house. Ashes of the dead work well to repel ghosts, but it’s not exactly something they can obtain large quantities of without gathering notice. They had enough to mix with paint and put one coat on each of their bedroom walls.

With how many times the two of them have encountered ghosts, having a small space that ghosts won’t penetrate is at the top of their priority list.

Bellamy tells Clarke none of this, of course. Lets her think it’s a nice gesture instead of alerting her to the fact that the ghost might be able to get to her if she stays downstairs. No sense in startling her further.

Octavia jumps into action as the good host, showing Clarke the bathroom and towels and being obnoxiously cheery in the face of this haunting. Bellamy stays in the living room, pulling out his laptop to do more research. But not about their ghost this time.

Thank God the living have paper trails he can work with.

Clarke Griffin really is as perfect as he assumed her to be. Straight A’s. Dean’s list. President’s list. On any kind of honor roll possible through high school and college. Went to art school, unsurprising.

Her social media, though, tells a different story. It’s a virtual ghost town. Artsy photos here and there, an occasional picture of herself. No friends. No family. Certainly not what he would expect from the senior class president of Arkadian.

Questions start answering themselves as he finds a virtual copy of their yearbook. She’s in almost every photo of the in-memoriam page recognizing someone by the name of Wells Jaha, the friend whose wake she had probably been talking about.

Bellamy pulls at that thread as far as it can go. Wells Jaha was stabbed right at the end of their junior year. His killer was never found.

Six months earlier, her father died in an accident. Hit and run. The driver had never been identified.

The Griffin family came to Ark about sixty years ago, so there is no way this ghost could have a history with them. It’s not a personal vendetta, which is a relief. But it’s hard to relax when the why is still at large.

At ten, he and Octavia sit out on the porch. Say what you will about the south, but there’s something nice about sitting out on a rocking chair in the warm summer air. Bellamy fills Octavia in on all he’s learned, staring out into the dark trees in front of their little home.

“She’s haunted,” Octavia says.

“Obviously.”

“No, I mean… she’s got a lot of darkness in her past. Maybe that’s why our ghost is targeting her.” Bellamy tilts his head to the side, pondering this. “Maybe we’re wrong about what ghosts want. They’re stuck here because they can’t make peace, but maybe some of them don’t want peace.”

“The ghost stories about Becca and Alie say that the people who had been ‘touched’ changed. Like they were going mad. Maybe that’s what’s happening to her.”

“But why such a long time? A hundred years since the last alleged case of Alie or Becca or whoever messing with someone?”

“If a ghost started telling you to jump off a bridge in a town where everyone thinks Becca is just a silly ghost story, would you tell anyone? Clarke certainly didn’t. People would think you’re insane,” Bellamy says. “I’ll go through the Ark obituaries.”

“In the morning,” O counters.

“Sure.”

He waits until she goes in for the night before pulling up the obituaries. Bellamy should just wait until morning when he’s brighter. His mind keeps drifting as he reads, forcing him to start from the top each time.

Breezes are rare in Ark. The heat wouldn’t be so bad if there was more wind, but the warm air just sits around him all thick and heavy. That’s why he jumps to his feet as soon as a chill washes through him.

He sees nothing, but sight isn’t all that relevant for what he does. Old ghosts, the more difficult ones to deal with, know how to drift about unnoticed. What they don’t count on is a member of living feeling their presence. Ghosts passing through you feels like ice, often mistaken for fear among those who haven’t dealt with it before.

It’s in his house, possibly up the stairs outside of his bedroom where Clarke lies fast asleep. Bellamy tiptoes back inside, hands up to reveal that he has nothing on him. He doubts this ghost has encountered a ghost hunter before, but just to be safe, he’d rather not be confused with one.

“Becca,” he whispers. A glimmer of silver dashes up to the ceiling and bounces back down. She failed to get to Clarke. His eyes lose sight of her. The sheen moves too fast across the room. “Alie?” he tries. The movement stops. So, it’s not Becca. But there must be some connection to her like the story says. He makes out a small shape in the corner of the room, round like a face. “What’s wrong?”

Her head tilts, considering. He takes a slow step towards her. If he can get her talking, he can understand. Once he knows the why, he can help her.

“It’s okay,” Bellamy says. But the next step forward is too far, it seems. The shape disappears as a line of silver darts through him, filling his chest with ice so quickly that it hurts. Bellamy clutches at his chest, wincing as he wills the warmth back through him.

He flops onto the couch, groaning low. His breathing takes a while to slow, his heartbeat even longer. Sleep is out of the question at this point. Bellamy’s mind is flipping through everything that just happened, looking for any clue into what is happening with this ghost. Hours pass before he finally gives into the exhaustion and shuts his eyes.

A loud vibrating drags him back to consciousness. A phone sits on the table, buzzing unrelentingly. Must be Clarke’s alarm for work. He rolls onto his side and grabs it.

Once upstairs, he knocks on his bedroom door. No answer. Rubbing his eyes, he nudges the door open. Clarke’s clothes from last night are crumpled on the floor in front of the bed, but he’s relieved to see her wearing a large black shirt. She’s fast asleep on her side, hugging a pillow as her blonde hair covers her face.

“Clarke,” he whispers.

“Mhmm.”

“I think your alarm is going off.” She curses into his pillow but doesn’t move. “I can drive you to work.”

Clarke pushes herself up, rubbing at her eyes. The dark shirt is drowning her, coming down to her soft thighs as she climbs out of his bed. Bellamy swallows when he realizes it’s one of his t-shirts. Octavia must have told her it was okay to borrow one, which it is. But a little warning that he was going to see a pretty girl in his bed wearing his shirt would have been nice.

“I need to grab a change of clothes. Could you just drop me at my place?”

“Yeah.” His voice cracks. Jesus. “Yeah, no problem.” She smiles at him, all sleepy and sweet. Bellamy gets out of there as fast as he can.

He sits in his truck, tapping on the wheel as Clarke slides into the passenger seat in last night’s clothes. She doesn’t say anything except mentioning that she lives over by the old factory. He says nothing at all. Bellamy will wait until he’s gotten to talk to Octavia before telling Clarke about Alie’s visit last night.

It’s a pleasant drive. Everything is so green here, so alive and beautiful. It makes even the longest of car rides bearable.

He sees the flashing lights before Clarke does. Three police cars block off Main Street. Just past them, a firetruck and two ambulances.

“What the—”

“Must have been an accident,” Clarke sighs. But there is no wrecked car in sight. Just a sea of police uniforms crowding the road.

“Someone’s dead.”

 _Jump_ , was what Alie had said to Clarke, and as soon as he remembers that, his eyes flicker up. At the top of the old courthouse are more police, putting yellow caution tape near the ledge. Cameras flash as crime scene photos are taken.

“Suicide,” Clarke whispers.

“Alie,” Bellamy corrects. Now he knows where she went after she left his house. If only he could have stopped her.


	3. Chapter 3

The cool air of the museum feels good on her skin, a welcome comfort given the last twenty-four hours of Clarke’s life. The day feels normal, as if last night were just one bizarre dream.

She wakes up from that dream as soon as she sees Bellamy and his truck waiting for her as she locks up for the day.

“It’s probably best if you stay with us another night.” No update on the suicide from this morning. No asking her if she’s okay. No explanation for why she’s better off staying with them. She’s beginning to see why he’s struggling for business.

“Probably?” she asks.

“Okay, it is best if you stay with us.”

She cocks her head to the side and asks, “What do you know that I don’t?”

“A lot of things, I’m sure.” With a huff, Clarke fishes out her car keys and walks toward her Camry. “Hey!” Clarke looks over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow. “I know how to repel them. So, for the time being, you’re better off with us than you would be on your own.”

“Fine. Can I at least go get my stuff?”

Bellamy trails her car home and waits patiently in the driveway as she packs for an extended stay with the Blakes. But what does one pack when being haunted by a ghost? A lot of socks, apparently. And three hardbacks that have been sitting in her closet for the last two years and she’s never bothered to read but now thinks that maybe this would be a good time to catch up on her favorite authors.

She tosses her duffel into the bed of his truck before climbing in. “You good?” he asks. No, she is not “good.” A ghost tried to convince her to kill herself last night, which isn’t even the first time this has happened.

“Yeah. Just like a sleepover except more hostile.” Bellamy snorts as takes the truck out of park. “How do you repel a ghost?”

“They don’t like death,” he says. “So, cemeteries, funeral homes, hospitals… all good places to avoid ghosts. O and I use ashes to keep them out of our rooms.”

“And that works?” He nods. “How do you know?” His jaw clicks.

Silence drags on for a few seconds before he says, “Because Alie couldn’t get into my room last night.” Bellamy keeps his eyes forward, missing her confused and terrified expression. “She, uh, came into the house. When she tried to move toward you, she jerked back downstairs. So, it works.”

“She came after me again? Why didn’t you tell me this morning?” she yells. He presses his lips together but doesn’t respond. Clarke falls back against the seat, groaning.

As soon as they’re in the driveway, Clarke gets out. “Clarke,” Bellamy says, but she ignores him as she grabs her bag and goes inside.

Octavia is sitting on the floor with her laptop and papers scattered on the coffee table in front of her. She glances up from her screen, gives Clarke a once over, and says, “I told him you’d be pissed.” Bellamy shuts the door behind them. “Hey Bell, I think she’s pissed.”

“Thanks, O,” he huffs.

“So, how bad is this?” Clarke asks Octavia. She seems like the more direct one of the two.

“Oh, pretty bad,” she says.

“Octavia!”

“What? She asked,” Octavia snaps. “And nothing I say to her is as scary as what she’s already dealt with. We’re in uncharted territory here.” Clarke’s eyes widen. “No,” she continues, now pushing herself to her feet. “We know what we’re doing when it comes to ghosts, this is just our first ghost who is, uh…” Octavia looks to Bellamy for the word, and Bellamy seems to struggle as much as she does.

“What’s different about my ghost?”

When Octavia can’t come up with an answer, Clarke spins on her heels and stares at Bellamy. This time, he’s actually direct with her. “We think she haunts people and not places.”

“Our theory for why ghosts are here is because they weren’t able to make peace with their life ending. Let’s say I got murdered right here,” Octavia says.

“Let’s not,” Bellamy groans.

“I’d probably come back as a ghost because my life was cut so short. I’d want to make sure that Bellamy got on okay. I’d be worried about my boyfriend. So, I’d linger around here until I was finally ready to move on.”

“Okay,” Clarke says, nodding along.

“Most ghosts pick one place and stick there. They might move around a bit, but they stick to the familiar places and people.”

“But my ghost moves around. And she would have no familiar people if she’s over a hundred years old?”

“Exactly. Though we aren’t sure how old she is. We still don’t know who Alie was,” Octavia explains. “So, given that she’s moving around a lot and seems to be chasing down people, I’m willing to bet she’s not trying to move on. That leaves the question: what is she trying to do?”

 _Kill me_ , Clarke thinks. But why? Is it just her?

No, it can’t be. There was Riley today, the teenager who jumped off the old bank building. Bellamy knew right away that it hadn’t been a coincidence, noticing a pattern that Clarke couldn’t see until now.

“Got any ideas why a ghost would want you dead?”

Clarke sits on the couch, her mind drifting back to the idea of Alie being in this house while she slept just above this room. She had been so close. Did Clarke do something to draw her here?

“I have a theory that she might have been a serial killer,” Bellamy says. “And this is the only way she can continue to kill the living.”

The commonality between Alie’s two hauntings is the house. It’s got to be. Clarke was there the first time. And Alie showed up just after she left it last night.

“I don’t know, Bell,” Octavia says.

But Alie showed up again last night, hours after the incident on the bridge. Here. Far from that farmhouse. She was drawn to Clarke again last night but couldn’t get to her. And sometime after she left, she got to that boy on the roof. Also far from the farmhouse.

“What do I and Riley have in common?” she asks.

“What?” Octavia asks.

“The boy who jumped,” Bellamy says. “You’re from the same town, I guess. He was blonde like you. I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I didn’t get much about him. It seems like no one was close to him, not even his family. No one saw it coming.”

Clarke shuts her eyes, willing the tears that poured out of her eyes last night in Bellamy’s bed to not return.

“Maybe you both—”

“We felt alone,” Clarke realizes. That’s the feeling that connects all of Alie’s visits. As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she knows she’s right. “That’s how she picks victims. She goes for the ones who have no one.”

Octavia starts scribbling excitedly and shuffling through papers, but Bellamy doesn’t share her giddiness over this development. His eyes bore into Clarke’s, like he’s searching for something. Belatedly, she realizes what a massive overshare that was. It’s not something she ever verbalizes. Hell, most of the time she forgets how alone she is. You get used to it after a while.

He says nothing about it, but it’s hard to move on from the conversation when his eyes are so firmly on her. Clarke can’t remember the last time anyone looked at her so intensely.

Clarke jumps at the sound of the doorbell, but it turns out to be Octavia’s boyfriend with a strange box in his hands.

“Think this will be enough?” Lincoln asks.

“For at least a coat, yeah,” Bellamy replies. Octavia runs up the stairs. “Did you have a hard time getting it out?”

“Always,” Lincoln laughs. Curious, Clarke walks over to take a look. Before she can, a t-shirt hits her in the face.

“Painting party!” Octavia cheers, tossing paint shirts at everyone else.

“I’ll buy you a pizza if you mix it,” Bellamy laughs to Lincoln.

“Nope. Not falling for that again.”

Turns out, ashes and paint don’t mix well. Nor does it smell great. But having their living room walls as her blank canvas helps her mind find ease. Losing herself in art has always been her best coping mechanism, after all. Too bad this particular work of art is lumpy and hideous by the time they’re done.

“You sure this doesn’t just repel ghosts because it’s ugly?” Clarke mutters. Octavia scoffs, but Bellamy almost doubles over with laughter. For the first time since the haunting, Clarke smiles.

“If ghosts didn’t like things that are ugly, they would have left Bell’s last girlfriend alone,” Octavia says.

“Hey,” Bellamy huffs, gesturing with his brush so that paint and ash splash on Octavia and Clarke. Octavia shrieks. Clarke darts to the other side of the room where Lincoln is painting to avoid the two siblings insulting each other then throwing paint.

“So, client or girlfriend? Or both?” Lincoln whispers.

“Client,” Clarke laughs.

The landline goes off, and the paint fight ceases. Bellamy’s posture goes rigid again, snapping into business mode. “Hello?” After a beat, his shoulders relax. “Jasper, slow down.” Clarke hadn’t realized the Blake’s know Jasper Jordan.

Octavia, who seemed intrigued just seconds ago, now plays on her phone. Must not be a work-related call. After a few minutes, Bellamy gets off the phone and picks up the paintbrush again.

“Another cemetery incident?” Octavia jokes.

“You think he’d stop hanging around there at night,” Bellamy mutters.

“His girlfriend is buried there,” Clarke snaps. She and Jasper may not be on good terms at the moment, but she’s not going to let them joke around about him. To the outside voyeur, Jasper looks like the stereotypical stoner who figured out that he probably won’t get busted for being high at the cemetery. “He’s been through a lot.” Bellamy and Octavia exchanged a concerned look. “Wait, is he a client of yours?”

“Uh, sort of,” Bellamy says, putting down the brush and slipping his shoes back on. Octavia does the same, so Clarke copies them.

“I guess I’ll keep painting,” Lincoln mutters.

“He called us once about a ghost at the cemetery, but we couldn’t find anything,” Octavia huffs. “We thought he was just high.” Bellamy curses under his breath. “Wait, you should stay here.”

“It’s fine,” Clarke insists. Bellamy steps in front of her. “Take me or not, but I’m going to that cemetery one way or another.”

He presses his lips together. “Bell,” Octavia pleads. “She might be able to help.” Clarke raises an eyebrow at him.

“Fine,” he huffs, and the three of them take off.


End file.
